Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina is overcome with emotion as his teammates storm out of dugout after the final out of the Redbirds’ Game 7 win over Rangers. It's St. Louis' 11th championship.

ST. LOUIS - The Cardinals didn't deliver the type of drama Friday night that they did in Game 6, but they gave the fans in St. Louis something even better: a World Series title.

Less than 24 hours after their improbable win forced Game 7, the Cardinals secured the crown with a 6-2 win over the Texas Rangers in front of a sea of red at Busch Stadium.

A team that sat 10 1/2 games out in the wild-card race on Aug . 26 can now call itself a World Series champion.

"It puts an exclamation point in the run we went on," general manager John Mozeliak said. "To be standing here tonight celebrating a world championship is something we really couldn t have imagined eight weeks ago."

The Cardinals have now won 11 titles in franchise history, second only to the Yankees 27.

Given the opportunity to pitch on three days rest thanks to Wednesday s postponement, Chris Carpenter gave the Cardinals everything he had. The righthander held the Rangers to two runs on six hits in six-plus innings, walking two and striking out five.

"You can't put it into words," said Carpenter, who went 2-0 with a 2.84 ERA in three starts. "It's an amazing feeling."

David Freese continued to swing a hot bat, delivering a two-run double in the first to erase Texas early lead. Freese finished the series with a .348 average (8-for-23), one home run and seven RBI to earn MVP honors.

"I sit here right now, and I still can't believe that we actually did this," said Freese, a product of St. Louis who set a record with 21 RBI this postseason. "It's going to take me a little bit, I think, to realize what we ve accomplished."

Allen Craig, starting in left field for the injured Matt Holliday, snapped a tie game in the third with a homer to right, giving the Cardinals a lead they would never relinquish.

Albert Pujols, whose three-homer, six-RBI performance in Game 3 will go down as one of the highlights of the Series, walked off the field as a champion for the second time in what might have been his final season with the Cardinals. The slugger is set to become a free agent next week, and while most expect him to return to St. Louis, fans were snapping pictures of his final at-bat just in case.

St. Louis became the fifth wild-card team to win it all, the first since the Red Sox broke their 86-year curse in 2004 by beating - yep, you guessed it - the Cardinals.

"We're just a gritty team that put it together at the right time," Lance Berkman said. "We have a great lineup and a great pitching staff, so it's not an accident that we're the world champions."

The title was the third for manager Tony La Russa, who won a ring with the A's in 1989 and led the Cardinals to a championship in 2006.

Texas pounced on Carpenter for two runs in the first, getting RBI doubles by Josh Hamilton and Michael Young to quiet the stunned crowd of 47,399.

How did the Cardinals respond? The same way they had a night earlier.

Freese tied the game with a two-run double in the bottom half, then Craig put the Cardinals in the lead with his solo shot, his third blast of the series.

Given new life and his first lead, Carpenter wasn't about to waste the opportunity.Carpenter When he retired Elvis Andrus to end a threat in the second, he started a run in which he set down 13 of the next 15 Rangers he faced, allowing only one hit between the third and sixth innings.

You can t say enough good things about the guy, Berkman said. He s such a big-game pitcher.

Carpenter had some help from his defense, as Freese at third base made a catch while hanging over the railing on top of the Texas dugout in the fifth, then Craig made a leaping catch at the left-field wall in the sixth, robbing Nelson Cruz of a potential home run.

The Cardinals tacked on a run in the fifth on Yadier Molina s bases-loaded walk, then pushed the lead to 5-2 when C.J. Wilson entered the game and hit Rafael Furcal with his first pitchforcing in another run.

Carpenter gave up a leadoff double in the seventh, but four relievers combined to retire the final 12 batters, setting off a celebration among the sellout crowd.

"We've been playing must-win games since the middle of September," Berkman said. "From a player's perspective, you couldn't have scripted it any better."